the view

We spent the weekend in Victoria so I could participate in the Victoria Writers Festival. What a wonderful few days. The organizing committee did a fabulous job of choreographing a seamless and beautiful programme of readings, panel discussions, and workshops. And a wrap-up party at the home of John Gould and Sandy Mayzell. I loved walking across the campus at Camosun College, under the mature Garry oaks, to read from my work and to share stories and laughter with a great group of writers.

John and I went to the Island two days early in order to have time to do our usual rambling around the city. We stayed in the Surf Motel on Dallas Road and this was the view from our room:

This is the Odgen Point breakwater. I wrote about this breakwater in Mnemonic: “All those huge granite blocks were brought from Hardy Island, near where I live on the Sechelt Peninsula. I want to walk out on it as I did as a young girl with boyfriends on dark Friday nights. We’d pause to kiss as waves crashed against the exposed side. I always felt like I might fall — into the deep cold water of Juan de Fuca Strait of the most mysterious waters of human affection.” It always felt kind of dangerous to me. And now I note that railings have been erected along both sides of the breakwater which is perhaps a metaphor for aging.

I walked by myself down Dallas Road to stand in front of the house Charles Newcombe built in 1907 and part of the layered history that is Victoria to me. I stopped to pick a sprig of Quercus virginiana from the tree I wrote about in Mnemonic. I’ll keep it on my desk to take me back to that street, that house, its complicated legacy.

We also drove out to Goldstream Park to watch the beginnings of the salmon run there. We saw just a few fish, early swimmers, and some dippers in the shallow riffles. It’s an extraordinary place, that river making its way under huge maples and cedars more than 500 years old. I was taken to Goldstream Park as a child to see the fish each autumn and I’ve never forgotten the smell, the excitement of glimpsing them sidling under the ferns overhanging the river edges, and their intricate skeletons stripped clean by eagles and ravens. Time stands still, and it doesn’t.